Effectively Provide Monitor/ Cue Mixes for Vocalists with Logic or Garageband?

If you have previously worked with analog gear with tapes or just played live with analog boards this issue is such an intuitive stuff that it does not even occur to you... unless you make a big leap into a Digital Audio Workstation such as Logic or even Garage Band.

Now you have your own 32-track "virtual" board, and you are all excited to record with it. Then the reality hits.

Here is what happens,

Your vocalists are used to hearing the live mix with effects, mostly reverb to be added in the monitor or headphone mix.

You probably through or already tried turning on the software monitoring. If you have not done this yet, you will soon you realize that that the mix that come out of the computer is slightly but significantly delayed (and you cannot make this to absolute zero delay.) This is the latency which everyone is talking about.

This is definitely not acceptable in any musical performance. You could adjust the latency and buffers etc., but as soon as you do that the CPU is over-taxed and your DAW software starts to do some glitchy crackly or poppy nasty stuff as you add more tracks and effects, worst yet, your DAW says "system overload" and refuses to record.

You could get an out-board reverb box to supply the cue mix for the vocalist while getting the dry mic out to the DAW. But for most home recorders like myself, we don't (want to) have such a luxury to have a mixer board plus an out-board effects (and if you have the money, I'd invest in a control surface instead to make your mixing tasks easier.)

Well, this is a common enough problem that there are "boxes" you can buy these days to fix this issue.

Unfortunately you (and I too) probably bought more simpler (not necessarily inexpensive) converter box like a Duet or M-AUDIO Fastrack type deals, but they are not really designed for this type of application.

What I needed to get into is to get an effect processor box (and you can Google for it). 

What I am using right now is the MOTU UltraLite mk3. Also there is another product from TC Electronics called Desktop Konnekt. There are many more from low to high end and if you know of them please commenting on this post. I have no relations to any of these companies I mentioned.

These boxes have the following circuits;

• Signal processor with digital reverb, compressor and limiter. The compressor and limiter are also a welcome additions as these tasks are done in the box before the signal hits the DAW.
• Internal mixer that can route the raw input straight to the DAW and also sends input separately to internal mix buses for headphone and monitor outputs through its own effects.

So with this, I can provide a latency-free vocal monitor with any amount of reverbs added and also independently adjustable levels to the vocalist while recording the raw vocal into my DAW. This lowers the CPU requirement for the DAW too and also prevents accidental clipping.

To get into this, you do need to shell out anywhere from $200 (TC) to $600 (MOTU) for this set up, but if you do need to record vocals or other live instruments this is pretty much a "must have" setup. They are USB and/or Firewire connected so they will work with your PC or Macs with most DAW software. Check the spec though to make sure that USB support is there.

The more price you pay, more inputs and output lines you get, which, in the end, saving you money since even in my meager setup, I do have two synths (that takes already 4 inputs) a WaveDrum plus a vocal mic going so that's 7 out of 8 provided in mkIII.

Another Tip:

If you have a lot of tracks going, you may over-tax your CPU and causes a lot of issues, among which is some latency.

Bounce a headphone monitor mix and record the vocal separately on a separate project. This will reduce the CPU based latency.